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Sustainable fashion: Young designers show the way this Environment Day
Weaving environmental concerns and fashion into fabrics of sustainability, young designers are looking beyond profit margins to tailor a new sensibility with collections that reduce the carbon footprint of textiles and reduce waste. Like budding designer Ashita Singhal, who describes her journey in design as an “awakening”.
New Delhi (PTI): Weaving environmental concerns and fashion into fabrics of sustainability, young designers are looking beyond profit margins to tailor a new sensibility with collections that reduce the carbon footprint of textiles and reduce waste. Like budding designer Ashita Singhal, who describes her journey in design as an “awakening”. “The clothing industry is the second largest polluter in the world, second only to oil.
It becomes a nasty business when the manufacturers are only concerned with the profit margin and not the environment,” the Delhi-based Singhal said.
As another World Environment Day comes around on June 5, the numbers tell the textile pollution story. Surveys show that nearly five per cent of all landfill spaces consist of textile waste. Besides, 20 per cent of all freshwater pollution is caused by textile treatment and dyeing.
Over 80 billion garments are produced annually, worldwide, and it is estimated that 13.1 million tonnes of textile scrap go to the waste stream. Once in landfills, natural fibres can take hundreds of years to decompose.
They release methane and CO2 gases into the atmosphere. Additionally, synthetic textiles are designed not to decompose.
In the landfill, they release toxic substances into groundwater and surrounding soil, states Charlie Ross in his book, “The Swatch Book”. India is the global host of this year’s World Environment Day and the theme is ‘Beat Plastic Pollution’.
It was the sight of a huge 'waste mountain' on a roadside in South Delhi's Okhla which changed Singhal's view of fashion, instilling in her a sense of responsibility.
She said she was fascinated by ‘fast fashion’, the term used to describe the movement of designs from the catwalk to becoming fashion trends, and glamour and joined a fashion design course.
“Soon, I got acquainted with the ugly truths and reality of fast fashion,” said the 23-year-old who recently completed her PG in Fashion Design from Pearl Academy.
For her final project “Blue Poetry”, she reclaimed textile waste through handloom weaving and reinvented fashion by using sustainable design techniques, up-cycling and zero waste. The collection was showcased at the Amazon India Fashion Week 2018.
